If the Dodgers today had Zack Greinke, Hisashi Iwakuma and Aroldis Chapman, they would be lambasted for spending too much.

In reality, they do not have Greinke, Iwakuma and Chapman and are being fried for spending too little. That criticism plays out like this: If you are going to offer Greinke a five-year contract for the most money ever per year, just go to six and get it done. You are the Dodgers, after all.

Of course, had they done that, they would have heard: “The Dodgers are just trying to buy a title.”

This is the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t two-step the Yankees have faced throughout Steinbrenner ownership. The Dodgers became full members of the club the past two years by topping the Yankees in payroll, notably in 2015, when they had an MLB record for both payroll ($297.9 million) and luxury-tax penalty ($43.6 million).

“I remind the thin-skinned people in front offices of the smart words Hyman Roth gave Michael Corleone in that hotel room in Havana — ‘This is the business we have chosen,’ ” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said by phone. “The criticism and fishbowl scrutiny is just part of the business. … I am really proud to represent a team that has won 90 games and the division title [each of the last three years]. Yet, that is not good enough for our fans, the media, ownership and me. That is the way it should be. We are the Dodgers, we represent Los Angeles. We should expect to compete for the top every year. Criticism is what goes along with that, which is just fine.”

The Dodgers and Yankees actually find themselves in somewhat similar scenarios: 1) possessing a few bad contracts that they want to either trade or have expire; 2) trying to honor their payrolls, expectations and history by attempting to win now; 3) but recognizing that the game has changed, to some large degree, because stricter drug testing and penalties have made having too many older players crippling regardless of payroll size; 4) thus, both teams see the value of not selling tomorrow — raiding their farms systems or overstuffing future payrolls — to prioritize today.

“We are trying to be as good as we can be, and if we play up to expectations that will not be an issue,” Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi said recently. “Meanwhile, we are undergoing a little transition in which we are trying to get more good prospects into our system.”

The Dodgers have made some missteps in this, notably getting too creative last July to use mainly money to obtain Mat Latos and Alex Wood rather than finding a way to deal prospects to land Cole Hamels as a third ace behind Clayton Kershaw and Greinke then, and a hedge on Greinke leaving later.

Farhan Zaidi and Dave RobertsUPI

But all organizations err — and those with the money to do so err on a grander scale.

What all organizations do not have is the three ingredients to short- and long-term term success, and the Dodgers have as much or more of any team: 1) money, 2) prospects, 3) intelligent, ingenious leadership to maximize those assets.

Their current image problems mainly are about dollars spent — including assembling the highest-paid front office ever by importing, among others, Andrew Friedman from the Rays to be the president of baseball operations, and Zaidi from the A’s.

They brought league-wide gasps for how much money they were willing to eat, for example, to make Matt Kemp go away. But the goal was to expunge players who did not function well on their roster or clubhouse, improve payroll situations beyond 2015 and use money rather than touted prospects to facilitate moves.

Recognizing they would not have access any time soon to the top of the draft, the Dodgers spent huge in Cuba for what they deemed first-round talents and did not stop because they know the penalty for spending so much now is to have severe limitations in the international market the next two years.

That they lost the division series in five games to the Mets to remain title-less since 1988 only amped up criticism of the decision making — too much money for nothing.

And the hits have persisted in the offseason.

Stan KastenAP

Kasten likes to point out from his Atlanta days that the Braves obtained their Big Three in the traditional ways: Tom Glavine (by draft), Greg Maddux (by free agency) and John Smoltz (by trade). Well, Los Angeles just lost three players in very modern ways: The Dodgers thought they were finalizing a five-year deal with Greinke when an eleventh-hour, six-year record deal by the Diamondbacks changed that. They thought they had Chapman obtained from the Reds before they quashed the swap when a police report surfaced alleging the elite closer had choked his girlfriend and fired his gun in his home. And they lost out on Iwakuma when he flunked their physical.

In the days before Christmas, the highest-spending team ever had kept injury-prone Brett Anderson on the $15.8 million qualifying offer and the faded Chase Utley for $7 million. They still had financial and/or temperamental headaches with outfielders Carl Crawford, Andre Ethier and Yasiel Puig. They had a rookie manager, Dave Roberts, to navigate this after the departure of Don Mattingly. They had the Arizona and San Francisco making an assault on the NL West crown by stocking up on starting pitching. And they were getting roundly beaten up for all of this, particularly in L.A.

“I will concede it has been a fascinating last couple of weeks,” Kasten said.

But there was still a lot of offseason — and still lots of time until July 31 — to use the money, prospects and smarts to particularly find a starter or two.

“I don’t care about that statistic,” Kasten said of the payroll. “All that matters to me, our ownership and our front office is what kind of team we have, not if it is a high- or low-payroll team. We feel confident we are going to be not just competitive, but contending. That is the goal regardless of payroll.”